Tennessee man arrested for Facebook 'like'

A radio host in Memphis, Tennessee, was placed in handcuffs on Tuesday after he “liked” a Facebook post made by a woman who had previously filed a restraining order against him.

The incident occurred when a woman named Towanna Murphy posted a
video on Facebook. Talk radio host Thaddeus Matthews, who used to
work with Murphy and reportedly had a sexual relationship with
her, “liked” the update, leading her to snap screenshots of the
post and head to the police.

According to local Fox affiliate WHBQ in Memphis, 56-year-old
Matthews claims he turned himself in to authorities, but either
way police agreed with Murphy, arrested him, and charged him with
violating a protection order. Matthews is now free after posting
a $1,000 bond.

This isn’t the first time Matthews has had a run-in with the law,
however, nor is it the first time his social media activity has
landed him in hot water.

In November, he was indicted for publishing a pornographic image
that depicts a young child performing a sexual act on an adult
male on Facebook. He was officially charged with especially
aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, aggravated sexual
exploitation of a minor and sexual exploitation of a minor,
according to Memphis-based publication The Commercial Appeal.

For his part, Matthews claims he only posted the image in order
to help law enforcement discover the identity of the man depicted
in the picture. He added that an unnamed woman sent him the photo
multiple times.

If convicted, Matthews faces anywhere between two and 30 years in
prison.

This marks the second time in less than a month that a social
media-triggered restraining order violation has led to an arrest.
Just last week, reports surfaced that a Massachusetts man was
arrested and placed behind bars for sending a Google+ invitation
to his ex-girlfriend despite the fact that she had a restraining
order against him.

That particular case took an interesting twist when the suspected
individual, Thomas Gagnon, claimed he never actually sent the
invite, and that it was automatically sent by Google.

Of course, Google also recently sparked controversy with its decision to
allow any Google+ user to email a Gmail user, regardless of
whether or not they know their email address.